


Thought you were history with the slamming of the door

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Series: Natasha/Darcy Grosse Pointe Blank AU [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: AU, F/F, Femslash, School Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 19:11:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3458585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been ten years since Darcy last saw Natasha Romanov, but she’d recognise that flash of red hair anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thought you were history with the slamming of the door

**Author's Note:**

> So for ages I tried to write a Grosse Pointe Blank Darcy/Natasha AU, but I couldn't get it to work. All that I could write was this scene.

**Thought you were history with the slamming of the door**

 

It’s been ten years since Darcy last saw Natasha Romanov, but she’d recognise that flash of red hair anywhere, even in the middle of a crowded room. At the sight of it, everything else melts away, Darcy’s vision fading out around the edges, until all she can see is Natasha, all red curls and a curve-hugging black dress. It’s been ten years, Darcy thinks, and there’s Natasha, out of the blue.

It’s not like Darcy hadn’t considered that Natasha might show up to their high school reunion, but – _now?_ After all these years of wondering? After Natasha had disappeared on prom night, never to be seen again, leaving her best friend with no clue what the hell had happened to her?

Because it wasn’t like Darcy and Natasha hadn’t been close. That was part of why it hurt so much, when Natasha disappeared. The two of them had been best friends since the beginning of high school – back when Darcy was tall and skinny and waiting for her boobs to grow in like everyone said they would, and Natasha was a tomboy in jeans and a baseball cap with her favourite team on it. They’d grown up sharing everything with each other, practically inseparable: they’d spend all day together at school and then head over to Darcy’s house to spend even more time together. (Never Natasha’s house: Natasha never talked about her family, but she didn’t need to. Darcy had seen the occasional bruises Natasha hid beneath long-sleeved t-shirts.) Even after Darcy had started dating, and spending more time with her boyfriend, she still spent as much time as she could with Natasha.

And then Natasha hadn’t gone to prom, and then she didn’t come to school, and Darcy couldn’t get anyone to care until Natasha was long gone, wherever she was. For years, Darcy spent sleepless nights wondering what had happened to Natasha – had she run away? Been abducted? Was she even alive?

Nobody knew, least of all Darcy.

So Darcy stands rooted to the spot, unable to take her eyes off her former best friend. Natasha looks different, Darcy thinks. It’s not just the way she’s dressed – Natasha of ten years ago would have had to be coaxed into wearing a dress like that – but something more subtle, more essential. Natasha used to look perpetually sullen, barring the rare smiles she sometimes sent Darcy’s way, but now her expression is open and pleasant, smiling. Gone too is the customary slouch: Natasha stands with her back straight and walks with purpose, the picture of confidence. Wherever she’s been – whatever she’s been doing – it’s been good for her.

Anger and bitter jealousy – irrational – curls in Darcy’s stomach. She should be glad that Natasha is okay – that the worst of her imaginings never came true, after all. How many times has Darcy hoped that Natasha was out there somewhere, safe and sound? And yet, now that Darcy sees her, looking absolutely fine – better than fine – Darcy can’t help but feel angry and jealous. Because Natasha should have been in Darcy’s life all this time, and she hasn’t, and however happy she looks now, she got that way _without Darcy_ , while Darcy felt the keen ache of her best friend’s loss.

While Darcy is standing there staring, fighting the warring emotions inside her, Natasha turns, smiling, and her eyes meet Darcy’s.

Darcy isn’t sure what to expect, but Natasha’s eyes blow wide, and her expression is uncertain and discomposed before it smooths over, and Natasha is moving in Darcy’s direction, smiling again.

“Darcy,” Natasha says.

“You’re not dead,” Darcy blurts, her grip tight around the stem of her wine glass.

Natasha’s smile falters slightly.

“I’m not,” she agrees.

Darcy isn’t even aware of doing it: one minute she’s holding her wine glass in a tight-knuckled grip, the next she’s pouring it over Natasha’s head.

Natasha’s eyes are wide and incredulous as wine runs down her face and drips from her curls – that’s one dress Natasha probably won’t be wearing again, Darcy thinks. But she can’t find it in herself to be sorry.

Instead she turns and without another words walks from the hall, out into empty corridors, and outside into the parking lot.

She’s breathing heavily, like she’s been running a marathon, her chest heaving, and it takes Darcy a moment to realise that there are tears running down her cheeks. She swipes at them angrily, and in a fit of temper throws her wine glass at the concrete. It shatters, but Darcy doesn’t feel any better.

Darcy hears the quiet clack of heels, and stifles a sob, and then hears Natasha’s voice, more tentative this time.

“Darcy?”

Darcy turns on her.

“You _left!_ ” Darcy bawls. “You just up and vanished, and I didn’t know what had happened to you! Ten years wondering if you’d been brutally murdered! Would it have killed you to have called? Sent a postcard? _Anything?_ ” She takes a deep breath. “ _Ten years!_ ”

“I’m sorry,” says Natasha, and all the confidence of before is gone, leaving her looking more like the Natasha Darcy used to know. The sight is both comforting in its familiarity, and infuriating – Darcy doesn’t want to be the thing that makes Natasha lose her confidence. She always wanted Natasha to be self-assured, to believe in herself. She spent five fucking years trying to build Natasha’s confidence, before Natasha vanished and it didn’t matter anymore.

Natasha is looking at Darcy, just looking still and watchful, as though waiting to see how Darcy responds before she reacts. In its way, that’s new, too.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Natasha says, instead of going off into an impassioned diatribe that might, at least, give Darcy some idea what she was thinking.

“I want to know what the hell you were thinking!” Darcy exclaims, flinging her hands in the air. “I want to know where you’ve been for the last ten years, what you’ve been doing! Why the hell you didn’t _contact_ me in all that time!” She folds her arms, and levels a look of stern expectation at Natasha. “Just… explain. _Please_.”

Natasha hesitates for a second, then nods, her expression firming, her back straightening.

“It’s hard to explain,” she says slowly. “It was a long time ago, and I was a different person back then.” Her mouth twists ruefully, her gaze distant, and Darcy knows she’s thinking back to when they were both just teenagers. “I… I guess it started when I decided not to go to prom.”

Darcy pounced on that.

“Yes! Why didn’t you go?”

Natasha’s mouth twists further; she stares out at the parking lot, beyond Darcy’s shoulder.

“I couldn’t pretend anymore,” she says quietly. “I couldn’t let it go. Not when it was killing me.”

“What?” Darcy asks. “What was killing you?”

Natasha meets Darcy’s eyes then, her expression calm and steady.

“You and Jason,” she says. “That’s what was killing me.”

Darcy’s mouth goes dry.

“W-what?”

Of all the things Natasha could say, Darcy never expected her to say _that_. Darcy doesn’t understand, not at first, but Natasha goes on, and things start to become a little clearer.

“You know, when we were younger, I thought it would always be just you and me,” Natasha says, and maybe her tone is a little wistful, but honestly, it’s hard to Darcy to tell. “You were the only one who ever mattered to me. You know what my family were like: I always intended to get away from them as soon as I could. But I always figured it would be the two of us together, until Jason.”

“I don’t understand,” says Darcy, although there’s a knot of apprehension in her stomach.

Natasha smiles sadly.

“I was sitting there on prom night,” she says, “in a rented prom dress you’d picked out for me, and all I could think of was that you were going to prom with Jason instead of me.” Natasha shrugs her shoulders. “And… between that realisation and everything going on at home, I realised that I had to get out. So I packed my bags and left. Worked odd jobs until I fell into something that worked for me.”

Darcy feels sick. There’s a hollow feeling in her chest, and her eyes are prickling all over again.

“Oh,” is all Darcy can say. “ _Oh_.”

Something thorned and ugly curls in her stomach, and Darcy can’t find the words she wants to say.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Darcy manages.

Natasha shrugs, like it’s all water under the bridge, and to her maybe it is.

“You were in love with Jason, so…”

“I wasn’t,” Darcy says quietly, because no matter how much she might have pretended, gone along with it all, _Jason_ was never the one she was in love with.

She and Natasha had been such good friends, everyone knew it. Darcy had thought there must be something wrong with her to want more than that.

Natasha’s brow furrows in confusion.

“But… you were always raving about him, going on about how sweet he was…”

“I was trying to make it seem convincing,” Darcy says, and closes her eyes against the tears that well up.

She’d been so busy trying so hard to act like all the other girls that it had never occurred to her that maybe, Darcy wasn’t alone in this. That maybe she wasn’t the only one terribly, unsuitably in love.

But now she knows the truth, and it hurts more than anything, to know what Darcy might have had if she hadn’t been so afraid and determined to hide.

“What do you mean?” Darcy hears Natasha ask, her voice soft and wary.

“I was – I was in love with you too,” Darcy chokes out, and she’s crying so hard now, sobbing on every word. “I thought there must be something wrong with me.”

There’s a long silence that stretches into a moment of infinity, and then a gentle touch at Darcy’s shoulder. She opens her eyes, blinking away tears, to see Natasha staring at her with an expression that Darcy can’t interpret.

“I guess that’s a pretty big communication failure,” Natasha says cautiously, and Darcy laughs a little hysterically.

“Oh my God,” she says, “come here. I’ve missed you so _much_.”

Darcy flings her arms around Natasha before her friend can react, ignoring the wine on Natasha’s dress and in her hair. But Natasha hugs her back, and Darcy clings to her tightly.

Ten long years without her best friend, the girl she was in love with. Whatever regrets Darcy might be feeling, she can’t help but be glad that Natasha is _here._

They part after a long moment, both of them aware that while they’re not exactly strangers, there’s an awkwardness there that can’t be overcome just yet.

“What do you say we get out of here,” Natasha suggests. “Go get a coffee or something and catch up.”

“Sounds like a plan,” says Darcy, fumbling at her purse for a tissue she can use to wipe her face. “I’ve seen everyone else I wanted to see, anyway. It’s like everyone swelled.”

“Or went bald,” Natasha adds.

“Or both,” Darcy agrees.

Natasha takes Darcy’s hand and tugs. She’s smiling.

“Come on,” she says. “We can take my car.”

Darcy lets herself be pulled along.


End file.
